Konstantin Levin did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away the beauty of what he saw.

You consider war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!

The kinder and more intelligent a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people. Kindness enriches our life; with kindness mysterious things become clear, difficult things become easy and dull things become cheerful.

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.

In order to carry through any undertaking in family life, there must necessarily be either complete division between the husband and wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be undertake. Many families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.

There lay between them, separating them, that same terrible line of the unknown and of fear, like the line separating the living from the dead.